


A Walk through Darkness - WIP

by DerHarlekin



Category: 40K - Fandom, Dark Heresy, WH40K - Fandom, Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, only war
Genre: Astra Militarum - Freeform, Calixis sector, Gen, Horror, Imperial Guard, imperium, tranch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:40:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23099464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DerHarlekin/pseuds/DerHarlekin
Summary: An Imperial Guardsman gets separated from his squad during an operation on Tranch, falling through a dark shaft into old tunnels.
Kudos: 1





	A Walk through Darkness - WIP

**Author's Note:**

> (This story is set on the planet “Tranch”, in the Calixis Sector from Dark Heresy 1E.)
> 
> It's still WIP

Sakurius was kneeling on the ground, tears running down his face, clearing small paths through the dirt and ash on it. His head was spinning and hurting, his back cramped and he felt so weak, so incredibly weak. His squad and he just brought the third group of mutants this week into a building: men, women, children, old and young, sick and healthy – to burn them inside. Burn them all. It was retaliation, his Sergeant told him, for the lost comrade who was killed by a booby trap that consisted of a hand grenade and a firebomb. Sakurius watched this soldier die; he had been a friend, reeling in pain. So much violence and now these mutants, these people, would burn, too. And he was part of it. He didn’t want to do it anymore.  
“I will count to three, and then you will stand up soldier.”, a hard and clear voice said, accompanied by a bolt pistol placed next to his face. It was his Commissar. Sakurius felt so small and weak, but he knew he had to push himself to go further. No one would understand this weakness; the Commissar would shoot him for it.   
“...1.”  
Panic arose in his stomach as Sakurius tried to get up. He pressed the shaft of his Lasgun against the ground to use as a support. As the Commissar was just about to say “2”, the soldier was on his shaking legs again.  
“Look around. Look at your Comrades, your siblings in arms. They serve the Golden Throne, as you do. They depend on you, as you depend on them. The Golden Throne depends on you. Such signs of weakness and cowardice are a disgrace.”  
Sakurius responded with a weak nod and tried to wipe the tears from his face, further smearing dirt on it which only irritated his eyes further. He felt that he didn’t really believe what the Commissar said, especially his claim that the Golden Throne depended on him. But what did he know?

***

Sakurius refused to watch as the other members of his squad set fire to the building, but he would never forget the screams he heard as their captives burned alive. Afterward, he followed his comrades-in-arms as they proceeded down a side street connecting a former commercial district of the hive with a hab block. Everyone had their guns readied, though Sakurius felt like his own would slip out of his hands at any moment; the oil and sweat on his hands didn’t make it easy to get a good grip on anything.  
At this thought, he stepped…onto nothing. Someone had covered up a hole in the ground with a stretched, grey blanket and covered it up with a few light stones, dust and old papers, to look like the rest of the street. In that instant, Sakurius screamed. As he began to fall, he caught a brief glimpse of the faces of his squad mates as they stared at him. One attempted to grab him but failed. Then darkness.  
Sakurius found himself sliding down a shaft, slippery from oil and mold. He couldn’t manage to get a grip anywhere, though his hands searched frantically in every direction for something to grab on to. He soon fell from the end of the shaft and was plunged into a small basin filled with water. Quickly he surfaced, since the water was only chest-deep when he stood up and found his Lasgun still hanging from its belt around his shoulder. *He let out a sigh of relief, then looked around; it was almost pitch black, save for the bit of light that came through the shaft. The relief, which had followed the panic from gliding down the shaft, was now being replaced by a creeping fear. How would he get back to his squad? He turned to the shaft and yelled “Guys? Are you there?”   
For a few seconds, there came no answer. Then his squad responded “We’ll search for a rope! Or another way to get to you! Our data-slate says that there’s an old freight elevator a few rooms further!”  
Another sigh of relief escaped Sakurius mouth. He turned towards the edge of the basin, which was a few metres away from him, when suddenly something touched his leg – something long. And he was sure it was alive.  
Sakurius started moving, panic gripping his throat tightly. He felt another touch, then another one. After that, a bite. He screamed as a burning pain came from his right calf, “Fuck!”. He had almost stumbled back into the water but managed to reach the edge and pull himself out before another attack could happen.  
Sakurius remained sitting after he escaped from the water and tried to pull his soaked pants out of his combat boots. They were torn apart where he had been bitten and were stuck to the wound. Getting the cloth away from the bite marks was terrible; he could feel the pain and an incredibly nauseous sensation when pulling it out of his ripped skin and open flesh, though his leg was barely visible in that near total darkness. He then realized that he didn’t know if he was alone, or if there was someone or something else there with him. The constant humming of the hive could easily swallow the sound of any somewhat quiet movement.  
With his shaking hands Sakurius took his lasgun and turned the mode to “flashlight”. The light would feed from his charge pack, leaving less power for shots, but he couldn’t do much else at this moment. He waved the beam around, an eerie hole of light in the darkness, moving through the room. No one else was there and the room wasn’t particularly big; there was just one entrance to it - a staircase leading downwards. He then pointed the flashlight at his leg. The wound was obscured by the dark, brownish and oily water sticking to his skin. It still burned and felt terrible.   
“All right, breath calmly, the Emperor protects”, he said audibly, more to calm himself down than anything else.   
He laid his lasgun to the side, still pointed at his leg, and searched through his equipment until he got to the first aid kit. It was in water-proof packaging, undamaged by the accident, and still usable. First, he applied as much disinfectant to the wound as possible, sometimes missing it due to his shakiness as he tried to stomach the pain that the treatment inflicted. After that, he wiped everything away with a small piece of fabric. Finally, he stuck the bandage, which resembled a giant band-aid, over the wound. Hopefully he had done the procedure right. Sakurius wasn’t entirely confident, but faith was the only thing left now.  
Leaning on his lasgun, he stood up. “Like a day on Klybo...”, he mumbled. Sakurius actually never went to Klybo. No one he knew ever went to Klybo. He just got used to this phrase since his older comrades use it all the time. “Eh, stop with those useless thoughts.” He shook his head, took a deep breath and tested out his wounded leg by shifting more of his weight upon it. A pain like lightning went through him and he immediately shifted the weight onto the other leg, clenching his teeth.  
He turned around and looked up to the shaft he fell through in hope his comrades would try to find a way to help him back up again, with a painful knot of doubt in his stomach, sure that the Commissar insisted on handling him as missing in action. Sakurius was always a burden, he didn’t shoot that well, his constitution wasn’t terrible, but surely not the best either, he hated it when he had to take lead and go first around a corner or into a room, but who didn’t hate that? But what the Commissar disliked the most was his lack of motivation for this war, he wasn’t convinced of all the fighting. Ofcourse, they were protecting actual humans against mutants, animals at best, monsters and perversions of humanity at worst, but he didn’t expect to burn families in their home, even if they were mutants. Families. The propaganda never mentioned this.   
Sakurius was sure the Commissar knew he was too soft and weak for his duty.  
Bitterness, loneliness and pain was coming up from his stomach, welling up behind his eyes and almost came out as tears when he suddenly heard someone calling. “SAKURIUS! We’ve got a long enough rope, hopefully…! We will let it do...” Then suddenly shots were audible, followed by an explosion and screams. Sakurius thought he heard the word “Elevator” among the screams, so he had to walk his way through these dark tunnels after all.  
He took a deep breath and turned to the door frame on the other side of the room, lighting with his lasgun at it.  
Stairs lead downwards into a thick, seemingly impenetrable darkness.  
He took another deep breath, he was about to take many of these on this day, and started marching towards it.


End file.
